After the Thaw
by Kristi
Summary: Resurrection story. Grief is of the earth, human spirit conquers all. Sequel to "The Elemental Trilogy" by Edna Krabapple. S,R


A/N: This is a sequel to "The Elemental Trilogy" by Edna Krabapple, in which Lily and James help Sirius break out of heaven.

"After the Thaw"

Sirius Black returned to life in springtime.

Perfect timing for the man who had a deep appreciation for grand entrances and had once claimed himself to be more popular than Jesus. ("Hoi! Jesus didn't get asked to the May Fete by six birds and two blokes!")

After convincing Remus that he was real – multiple times, in varied positions, some of which were possibly introduced to the world for the first time ever – they had finally fallen into a rock-like sleep, limbs entwined about each other. It had taken waking upon the morning (or afternoon, as it was) for Remus to truly believe, in his bones, that Sirius' return was permanent.

After several thwarted attempts, they finally managed to get out of bed and dressed, and Remus reluctantly accepted that he would have to share Sirius with the rest of the world. But first, there was one last task to put behind them.

Sirius' hand was the doorknob when Remus told Sirius he loved him.

"I love you too," Sirius said automatically. It had become instinct in the past fourteen hours; Twelve Grimmauld Place had never seen such love -- it had been whispered, moaned, and shouted into the headboard.

"I want --" Remus halted. This still felt new and airy, though the sense that he _wasn't alone anymore_ was beginning to solidify into fact.

Sirius cupped Remus' cheek and beckoned him to continue.

"I don't want us to be a secret this time." Remus took stock of Sirius' reaction: concerned but considering. "I don't mean we ought to walk into a Death Eater's rally and start snogging. But Harry loves you and he has a right to know whom you love."

There were their friends, too, Remus explained, and select Order members; if Hermione Granger had figured it out, the Weasleys had as well, so continuing to pretend – in certain company -- was rather silly.

Sirius kissed him and agreed and asked what had prompted this. Remus said something about secrecy eroding the soul, but that wasn't the whole truth; he'd learned this winter, fighting the war, that the world was cold and full of indifference. It wasn't something he'd ever believed before, not even on the loneliest of full moons.

When he lost Sirius, his grief had been as invisible as his love for him had been. Now, furtive love wasn't enough; Remus needed something sturdy and tangible, something that couldn't be hidden.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione made a grand commotion as they walked from the grounds to the common room, leaving muddy footprints and bits of grass and flower petals in their wake. They had taken their homework outside, but after the second time the boys found an excuse for an exuberant tussle, even Hermione had accepted that it was impossible to work Arithmancy equations on a beautiful spring day.

Somewhat surprising even to her, she wasn't irritated that their study session had deteriorated into fun. In some grownup corner of her mind, Hermione knew that someday, after the war, she would be glad for the memory of a day spent lazing on the lawn with her friends, talking of nothing, while book pages fluttered in the breeze and she idly worked chains of clover around her wrist and ankle.

At the portrait, the three friends heard teacher-shoes clicking down the stone corridor behind them, and, with the Pavlovian response of schoolchildren everywhere, they sobered.

Their Head of House was wearing an unfamiliar smile, despite – _has she been crying? _Hermione wondered.

Professor McGonagall addressed Harry by his first name and even touched his shoulder when she told him there was an important message on the floo.

"Erm, can I go clean up first?" Harry said, flashing his muddy hands. "Ron tried to knock me into the lake--"

"You put my books up a tree!" his friend protested, grinning.

McGonagall, frowning disapprovingly at their disheveled appearance, told him she would wait in the corridor

After the boys climbed through the portrait hole, Hermione lingered in the hall, arms wrapped around her books, a thoughtful look her on her face.

"Don't you have somewhere that you need to be, Miss Granger?"

Hermione nodded and, with a grace she'd recently adopted, climbed through the portrait hole. She hugged Harry as he passed her on his way out.

"What was that about?" Ron asked with what Hermione was beginning to recognize as jealousy.

"He kept loving him," Hermione said.

"Um. Good?"

"Possibly."

In her office, McGonagall pointed at a chair and told Harry to sit.

"This is very difficult to explain," she said.

Her tone lacked its usual strict edge when addressing a student. Harry remembered that someone once told him that Professor McGonagall had grandchildren whom she visited in the summer.

"Something has happened," she continued.

"Just tell me who died, okay?" Harry said, annoyed. At McGonagall's reaction – which he interpreted as annoyance – he added, "Ma'am."

McGonagall sat in the chair opposite Harry. "No one has died, Mr. Potter. Quite the opposite." She drew a breath. "There doesn't seem to be delicate way to say this, so I feel it best to use plain terms. Sirius Black is alive."

McGonagall's words went tinny, as if spoken through the tape player in Dudley's second bedroom. The air in the room grew viscous, yet time seemed to move impossibly fast. As directed, Harry stood on wooden legs and knelt on the oddly cool hearth and was suddenly looking into the parlor of Twelve Grimmauld Place.

The conversation was surreal. Even Sirius' face in the green flames, a wide smile and sparkling eyes while he joked with Lupin and said, "_It's really me, Harry – honest!"_ didn't convince Harry that this wasn't some sort of trick or mistake. Or a dream that would fade into a mist upon waking and leave him emptier than before.

Nothing Sirius said resonated in Harry's ears, and he was only vaguely cognizant of an understanding between the adults that Harry was being sent to the Black family home. Something like panic spiked in Harry's chest at this, but of course he couldn't say no to his godfather's confident ebullience.

"Can he spend the night?" Sirius asked McGonagall.

Students weren't often granted overnight passes, but McGonagall didn't hesitate to pronounce this a family emergency.

"I have a Potions test tomorrow," Harry said weakly.

"I'll speak to Professor Snape, don't you worry about that." McGonagall squeezed his shoulder.

"Tell Snape that Heaven does wonders for the soul_ and_ reduces wrinkles," Sirius crowed, itching to flaunt his resurrection in person.

"But does nothing for the maturity," Lupin said drolly.

While Harry fetched an overnight bag, McGonagall asked, "Sirius, am I to understand that you decided that _you _knew better than _God _who belonged in Heaven?" She said it like a schoolteacher, but in recent years, Sirius had begun to pick up her dry humor and the subtle affection buried therein. Sirius just grinned.

McGonagall accompanied Harry to Twelve Grimmauld Place, claiming to be concerned for his safety but really, the idea of her student meeting his only re-surviving family member stirred something like a motherly instinct within her.

Harry's body was rigid when Sirius hugged him, hands hesitatingly patting Sirius' arms, as if he didn't expect there to be flesh and bone beneath the sleeves.

"You're taller," Sirius said.

"You're . . . you," the boy replied.

"Yeah," Sirius said. "I'm really me."

Harry shuffled his feet on the worn wood floor, adjusting the strap of his school bag in which he'd packed both overnight things and homework. Harry looked at Remus, who was smiling quietly and not at all weirded out by this whole thing.

McGonagall hugged Sirius, chuckling that he was incorrigible, making trouble in heaven as much as on earth. She floo'd back to Hogwarts with assurance that she'd explain things to Dumbledore and the Order.

Remus watched with growing concern as Harry remained silently rooted where he stood.

"How?" Harry said.

Remus excused himself to make tea.

Sirius told the story: a Marauder's Map of the living and the dead, how he'd been too much on both and not enough on one, how the solution had been so simple, he suspected he'd only had to believe in it to make it happen.

When Remus returned with the tea tray, Sirius was telling Harry about Lily and James.

"You saw them?" Harry said, looking wracked and far less enthused than Sirius.

Sirius told Harry about the day he and Lily drank tea in her garden; Lily and James were happy together, they loved each other and Harry, and there was no pain beyond the veil, only bliss. Through this speech, Remus watched Harry's face calcify and his hand turn to a fist around the dangling strap of his schoolbag.

"She watches you," Sirius said. "All the time. You're never without them, you know--"

"_Shut up!_"

Tea sloshed over the edge of Remus' ceramic mug. Sirius look struck; Harry shook like a sapling in a storm.

"Harry . . ." Sirius reached for him, but the boy pulled away.

"You just – you just _die_ and leave me and you're gone for a year--"

"It wasn't a whole year," Sirius said.

"-- and I didn't have anyone to – and my aunt and uncle didn't _get it_ and they called you a criminal and -- _You_ _left me alone._" Harry drew a ragged breath.

"Harry, I didn't decide to die!" Sirius shouted, eyes hardening with anger.

"I know that! I _know_. I – just – I have homework to do."

Harry whirled, yanking his schoolbag out of the room behind him. Sirius and Remus heard heavy footfalls up the stairs that were followed by the slamming of a door.

Sirius stared at the spot where Harry had been standing, lips parted in shock and – Remus ached to recognize it – hurt.

"What the -- " Sirius turned to say.

Remus set his dripping mug on the coffee table and patiently waited for Sirius to finish quaking and erupt.

Harry flung his schoolbag into the dresser, its fifteen pounds of Wizarding World books eliciting a satisfying _thunk_. He kicked it for good measure, sadistically pleased by an inanimate object's pain as it skid across the bare floor and landed with another wall-denting thud.

It wasn't enough. He wanted to hit something. Some_one. _He wanted to scream, cry, act like Dudley in one of the five instances of his cousin's life when things didn't go his way.

Harry hated them. He didn't know who he hated exactly, but he did. _Hate_. It wasn't _fair_, nothing was _ever_ fair. Dudley got whatever he wanted, nothing Harry wanted ever happened. No one else in the world had his crappy life, no one had a scar and dead parents and had to be the Boy Who Lived when everyone else died and left him with people he hated and it wasn't fair _it wasn't fair _--

"_It's not fair!_"

Another shout from upstairs interrupted Sirius' rant. A wall somewhere groaned against an angry outburst.

"He's acting like a two-year-old," Sirius said.

As was his nature, Remus had sat quietly while catastrophe fell about him. Privately, he thought this was a bit of a black kettle statement. "He needs time to process it," Remus said.

Sirius considered this. "Hell with that. I'm going up to talk to him."

Oh, wonderful, Remus thought. Bury the kid in details about his dead parents, on top of everything else, and then force him to talk about it.

Remus snagged Sirius by the hand and pulled him towards the kitchen.

"Come help me with supper," he said neutrally.

"Who do you think you are, Molly Weasley?" Sirius grumped, but allowed himself to be led to the kitchen.

Harry would never admit to anyone that after he got tired of beating up the room, he flung himself onto the bed and cried like a girl.

Later, feeling emotionally strip-mined, he'd felt so foolish that he forced himself to do something mature and productive. He managed to finish six inches out of ten for History of Magic; the dull, monotonous listing of facts in Binns' required essay format calmed him.

No amount of whinging could convince Remus to be the one to ask Harry if he wanted any supper, so Sirius reluctantly trudged upstairs, wondering what the kid would yell at him for this time.

Poking his head inside the room, Sirius found Harry on one of the beds, actually doing homework. _Nice to know he can shout at me and then be so calm about it_, Sirius thought. The boy set down his quill and sat up when Sirius came into the room.

"What're you working on?" Sirius asked conversationally.

"Goblin uprising of 1557."

"Binns?" Sirius said. He glanced at the parchment covered in Harry's jagged handwriting. "I think I wrote that very same essay when I was your age."

"I'm sorry I yelled at you," Harry said.

"S'alright," Sirius said.

"I don't know why I said those things. Ever since last June, I've just been . . . weird. Sometimes I say things and I don't know why I say them. Sometimes I'm . . ." Harry crossed his arms and legs, folding into himself. "I'm not very nice to people sometimes. Sometimes I get really angry at stupid, little things that don't even matter."

Sirius sat beside Harry on the edge of the bed and _listened_, a skill he'd picked up while observing his loved ones from the distance of death. Harry talked of arguments with his friends, how he hated to be alone but at the same time felt as though no one understood him. That just this afternoon, when he'd been goofing with his friends and genuinely happy, he would suddenly feel a wave of melancholy loneliness.

When Sirius had watched Harry's grief from Heaven, Sirius had thought he'd understood it. But through the filmy veil of death, he'd missed the details; adding to simple teenage emotional turmoil was a rogue vein of grief. Sirius had had the bloody awful timing to up and die right when Harry had been slogging through the height of adolescence.

"And sometimes I think 'I hate you,'" Harry said, "and . . . and I think I'm talking to my dad."

"For dying?" Sirius murmured.

Harry nodded.

"And me?" Sirius asked.

Harry looked down; he didn't have to answer.

"Is that very bad?" Harry asked.

"No. It's human. You only can feel what you feel, and no one else can tell you to what your grief is supposed to be like," Sirius said, thinking of his year of depression and isolation before his death. "But things are going to be better. I'm not going anywhere this time."

"Are you going to stay here? In this house?"

"Only as long as I have to," Sirius said. "I'm going to get my trial."

"Do you think it'll work? That you can clear your name?"

"Yes," Sirius said with conviction. "Dumbledore and I started moving forward on it last year, but," he shrugged. "I know I can make them believe that I'm innocent"

"I'll testify for you," Harry said, and what he meant was, _I have faith in you_.

Sirius' eyes – indeed less haunted than they had been the last time Harry had seen them – crinkled at the corners.

"Thanks, kiddo." He squeezed Harry around the shoulders. "But all that is for later. Right now, Remus is probably picking at the sprouts and wondering what the hell is taking us so long."

The mood that evening was elevated. After supper, Harry helped clean up, asking to be taught kitchen spells, explaining that he was planning to get his own apartment the minute he turned seventeen and would need to know practical magic like that. This statement prompted a discussion of Harry's future plans, followed by godfatherly advice over a hand of rummy.

"My first apartment was a palace," Sirius reminisced.

"A palace of filth and pestilence," Remus added, picking up the king of hearts.

"It was colorful and interesting."

"Hmm, yes, and educational. The heroine addicts howled in three languages."

"You lived in Muggle London?" Harry asked, directing the question at Sirius, but Remus answered.

Harry looked back and forth between them, as if something was falling into place in his mind. Remus caught the look and glanced at Sirius. _Tomorrow_, Sirius mouthed while Harry studied his cards. Remus nodded.

Instead, Harry asked about his parents. Not what Sirius had learned beyond the veil, but stories from their life together. What kind of music did they listen to? What were their favorite classes? Things Sirius had wanted to tell Harry since he'd met the boy, but hadn't had the presence of mind until now.

After the game, Harry headed upstairs to finish his essay before bed and Sirius and Remus remained in the parlor.

"You fixed this place up while I was gone," Sirius mused, looking at the Reparo'd furniture and lack of dust or decay.

"I kept busy," Remus said. "Got rid of a lot -- dark arts things, mostly."

Sirius nodded. "Hope some of it was worth something." He stoked the fire that had died down. "This place looks almost livable."

"There's still some work to be done," Remus said. "If you plan to stay here."

Sirius sat beside Remus on the sofa, sideways with his legs folded under him, feet on the cushions in a way Mrs. Black would have smacked him for.

"I don't," Sirius said. "I'm going to get my trial, and I'm leaving here."

"Padfoot..." Remus said.

"I know," Sirius said. "It won't happen soon; but it _will _happen. In the meantime, things will be different from last year. I'm not going to spend my second chance in life piss drunk and moping around this house. I'm going to stop being a bastard of a boyfriend, too."

"You weren't--"

"I was, Moony. I know I was. I brooded, I picked fights with you because I was angry at a million other things, and I know you wanted to leave me a hundred times. But that's done. I swear. If nothing else, being dead gave me some bloody good perspective on what's important in life, and living in the past isn't it."

Remus touched Sirius' clean-shaven cheek, smiling slowly.

"I love you," Remus said, and what he meant was, _I believe you._

That night, Remus dreams that Voldemort is defeated; Harry grows into a brave and decent man; and Remus' students – for he is a teacher again -- work together regardless of family lineage or affluence. He and Sirius live out their retirement somewhere sunny and sandy where pretty boys serve them fluffy drinks, and Harry brings the kids round twice a year.

When he wakes in the hazy dawn, Remus chuckles at his dream, but not at the sentiment. Sirius rolls over in half-sleep and clasps his arm firmly around Remus' waist, and Remus slips off to sleep.

In his dreams, Remus has hope.

* * *

A million thanks to my beta reader, Sean, who gave such helpful comments as "MARY SUE MARY SUE!" You could guide ships through the fog with that voice, darling.


End file.
